Unfortunately Linux on ps3 isn't really that exciting from a games POV - it doesn't have access to all the memory, and the graphics card is totally locked out which means it's software rendering all the way. You could use Mesa, but that'd run pretty slow on the ppu. About the only viable approach would be to write a software renderer that ran on the spus, but that'd be big and complicated and I don't see anyone doing that any time soon.

For the arcades inside Home, Sony had originally planned to have them be Java-based.

Now that's interesting a bit of information. But then it never landed to a reality. Maybe they did not have a solid JVM implementation for ps3 in time.

Playstation Home is ps3 virtual world, much like The Second Life. But it seems all in-home mini games are all C++ games within the game engine itself. This does not mean it never can run Java, but may take a long time to see it happen. This would have been a great opportunity if Java had provided a more simple minigame framework.

YDL is on, and Java is not so hard to put on it. Downloaded it from IBM's site, 5.0 SR4 for PPC arch. Had just one small dependency problem.

Do not download 64bit PPC SR4 Java, because it wont work out of the box; YDL is mostly 32bit, so there are many unresolved depenencies. That can be fixed with a bit of work and access to Fedora5 repository.

Java works fine for regular Swing/Java2d apps. A bit slow to start (I'll have to check a bit how IBM's VM's work, there has to be some AOP in those), but when it is up, it actually looks pretty fast and snappy.

There are some problems. There's no access to RSX yet (Terrasoft guys are organizing a petition for Sony to open it up). And, somehow, I cannot get a sound to work from IBM's VM. Other than that, write once, run anywhere

On RSX front, maybe it wont be needed, it seems that terrasoft guys ported MESA in 4 days on available SPE's (6 of them are seen by Linux). The speed is something like 80 times faster than on some Intel machine. That piece of code I still can't find, though.

Anything you guys would be interesting me to try on this machine? Yep, you won't be able to do AAA title in Java on PS3 for now, but Princec stuff could work in not so distant future.

Thanks to share this info selendic, that's really interesting! It shows us some possibilities of Java on PS3. How can you measure the speed of Java by saying it's 80 times faster than some intel machines? Have you written a benchmark program or reused one? And, which tools/IDE have you used? Also, I think it's really hard to compare the cell architecture with Intel ones. They're so different and the cell has more cores than any mainstream Intel to date.

Thanks to share this info selendic, that's really interesting! It shows us some possibilities of Java on PS3. How can you measure the speed of Java by saying it's 80 times faster than some intel machines? Have you written a benchmark program or reused one? And, which tools/IDE have you used? Also, I think it's really hard to compare the cell architecture with Intel ones. They're so different and the cell has more cores than any mainstream Intel to date.

No, sorry for misunderstanding. It is not Java that is 80 times faster (it is actually probably slower, because Cell PPC is in order processor, so 3.2Ghz it has is more like 1.6 Ghz of out of order processor). The guys from Terrasoft, providers of Yellow Dog Linux for PS3 (basically a Fedora5 clone, you actually can put more or less any PPC Linux on PS3) are claiming that they have ported MESA software OpenGL library to use 6 of Cell's SPE's (basically a vector processing units). So, THEY say that MESA software OpenGL runs 80 times faster with that port than on some Intel processor (forgot which one)

More good news, applets work inside Firefox1.5, just played that great X86 emulator and few classical games that they offer. JavaWS kind of works, got some stuff to work, but some is asking for particular Suns VM and fails.

Even more good news, JSE6.0 is on its way from IBM, I'll apply today for testing the first builds available for testers.

All in all, this is all highly experimental and unoptimized. And great to see that it works out of the box. But, I really see no reason why, when full Java is OS, someone couldn't do proper optimizing for cell proc, and why Sony couldn't actually provide Java via firmware update in main PS3 OS (this setup is with Linux running as guest OS, which takes out some of available RAM)

No, sorry for misunderstanding. It is not Java that is 80 times faster (it is actually probably slower, because Cell PPC is in order processor, so 3.2Ghz it has is more like 1.6 Ghz of out of order processor). The guys from Terrasoft, providers of Yellow Dog Linux for PS3 (basically a Fedora5 clone, you actually can put more or less any PPC Linux on PS3) are claiming that they have ported MESA software OpenGL library to use 6 of Cell's SPE's (basically a vector processing units). So, THEY say that MESA software OpenGL runs 80 times faster with that port than on some Intel processor (forgot which one)

So, Cas, when are you porting LWJGL

JK

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Sorry to bump an old thread, but I noticed that apparently even JEmu2 (the applet version) is working on PS3 via Yellowdog Linux, and with sound as well.http://www.yellowdog-board.com/viewtopic.php?t=2082&start=15If that works (JEmu2 is quite resource hungry), I'd say PS3 seems to be quite capable of running J2SE games. Now we only need good OpenGL access

Not going to happen. Firstly since it's a custom nVidia chip they'd end up having to release internal details which they almost certainly want to keep secret. But mainly because by locking out the RSX they get a very robust way of preventing any kind of piracy - getting a copied game to run via linux is going to be impossible if theres no graphics card available.

At the moment the most practical way to get Java on a console would be to write some kind of emulation layer that'd provide a JVM on top of C# and XNA. It'd probably be possible to compile Java code down to C# bytecode, then port over the core bits of the standard library and write some kind of wrapper around XNA for hardware graphics.

Highlights of his commentary included custom content including user created content, such as your own clothing designs. Along the lines of customization he implied that users will be, “giv[en] tools to allow scripting, java minigames and so on."

Home is bringing some level of user-created minigames. This interview says Java minigames, but let's wait for more detailed information. Eventually might mean just javascript minigames.

I made a quick test and was able to run BD-J apps Hello World and RSSReader from the USB stick. RSSReader uses a socket connection so some sort of multiplayer BD-J games are indeed easy(?) to implement. Turn-based boardgames should fit great.

note: I don't have access to BD-J libraries or docs, but had an old dvb.jar from openmhp.org site. Using it and creating a mockup bdj.jar file did compiler happy.

well using BDJ for games is a pretty interesting entry point, but the unknown part is always the JVM which runs your app. It has multithreading etc. but you never know how it is implemented before you have written a benchmark (I have no PS3...). It is very unlikely that you get full access to the hardware from within a process which was intended to run bluray menus...

Yikes, I got JEmu2 running on BDJ on PS3 using a memory stick! Well, not everything works yet (most notably, sound), but the games that work run quite smoothly and easily fast enough, much to my surprise.

It's a bit of a pain though. I'm not yet able to get any meaningful stacktraces from the PS3, and BDJ on PS3 seems quite restricted with some things. For example, trying to get the max heap using Runtime throws a SecurityException. I've also seen some plain weird things, like (i >> 0) throwing a totally off runtime exception (I sometimes write that kind of thing for readability).Last but not least, I'm not aware of any good (and preferrably free) BDJ emulator to test things locally. I'm currently using xletview but many times things work on that but not on PS3, so it's an endless excercise in USB stick juggling to test things.

But otherwise, BDJ on PS3 does seem like a very usable environment for games as it seems fast enough for many types of games.

Well, not everything works yet (most notably, sound), but the games that work run quite smoothly and easily fast enough, much to my surprise....But otherwise, BDJ on PS3 does seem like a very usable environment for games as it seems fast enough for many types of games.

That sounds very cool. Did you do any benchmarks or can you tell me how fast it is compared to a PC? Is there that 64 MB limitation like in Applet mode?

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